Cover Story

Black Future Month

By Larry Matthews

So,
here we are midway through Black History Month and already it seems as
though the nation has fallen into the black hole of ignorance about
black Americans. It reminds me about the line that someone “has a face
you forget while you’re looking at him.” America is forgetting about
black people while it looks at them.

February is the cruelest month, with apologies to T.S. Elliot who
claimed it was April. February is a month in which the nation lies to
itself about itself. We gather for lectures about black history and
assure ourselves that we have made great progress from the Jim Crow
days of black/white fountains and segregated busses. Nothing could be
further from the truth.

True, we have a black president and a wonderful black family in the
White House. We see successful, rich black faces all over our
televisions and on our stages. White Americans observe all of this and
say, “Gee, we sure have come a long way.” In some sense, yes we have.
In other ways we are as locked in segregation as we’ve ever been.

Consider this: What if the Secretary of State stood before Congress and
announced that a foreign nation, say Iran or China, had in place
policies and laws that imprisoned one in fifteen men of a certain
ethnic minority? That these policies were responsible for 60 per cent
of the young people of this minority from obtaining even a basic
education in vast areas of the country? That a quarter million men,
women, boys and girls of this minority were shot dead in a thirty-five
year period? That, in fact, members of this ethnic minority were more
likely to be jailed than educated?

Politicians from both sides of the aisle would line up to introduce
bills to sanction such a nation. The air would be blue with
condemnation. We as a nation would demand that something be done.

That nation is us. There is no call that something be done. There is
only acceptance. We have a new Jim Crow era that is as heinous as the
old one. Under the old, pre-Civil Rights rules, a great number of
Americans assumed that the situation for African Americans was bad but,
hey, what can you do? It took courage, commitment and even bloodshed to
create change. Here we are in 2013 with a great many of us saying,
again, hey, what can you do?

For starters, we can look around our own communities and acknowledge
reality. We can demand that our schools offer pre-school programs that
teach kids to read, to get along with others, to see themselves as
cherished individuals. We can offer help to single mothers by teaching
them that they, too, are valuable as human beings and not just
dysfunctional consumers of high sugar fast food. We can address the
issue of African American boys who are on the fast track to a jail cell
by focusing on their potential as responsible men, responsible fathers,
contributors to their own well-being, and not losers who are the
leftovers of America.

It has been proved time and again that oppression of an entire people
produces a trauma that lasts generations. It happened to the Irish. It
happened to the Indians of South America. It happened to our own Native
People. And it happened to the Africans who were brought here in slave
ships.

Perhaps we should scrap the idea of Black History Month and replace it
with Black Future Month. Looking backward gives us a glimpse of past
suffering and a few rays of inspiration from Doctor King or Frederick
Douglas. But it doesn’t tell us anything about where we are today.

During February, African American children attend school assemblies
where they hear the same stories and they use their crayons to draw
pictures of Dr. King or Maya Angelou. The nine year old who today is
drawing those pictures will soon find that America has not put away the
chains. This boy will soon be wearing them and leaving hope and
opportunity behind on a school wall.

Each and every one of us should look into the face of that boy or that girl to witness the innocence that we are squandering.

Where is our anger? Where is our outrage? Are we so beaten down by our
dysfunctional government that we no longer even try? Are we on the left
so ashamed of being labeled “liberals” that we cower in resignation?

America is going through a crucial period when we are redefining
ourselves as a nation. There are many who say our best days are behind
us and we don’t have the money, the gumption or the vision to be
better. These people are hogging the narrative. We on the left must
find it in ourselves to break our own chains and look into the eyes of
the children who will have to live with what we do or fail to do.

We lost three-thousand of our citizens on 9/11 and went to war,
spending a trillion dollars-plus. We’ve lost a quarter million young
African Americans and we tell ourselves we don’t have the money to
prevent another quarter million from being killed.

Are you kidding me?

BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Larry Matthews, is a veteran broadcast journalist.
He is the recipient of The George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence
in Broadcast for his reporting on Vietnam veterans. He is also the
recipient of a Columbia/DuPont Citation, Society of Professional
Journalists, Associated Press, and other awards for investigative
reporting. He is the author of five books including, I Used To Be In Radio: a Memoir. Click here to reach Mr. Matthews.